Nutrition for marathoners – eat right and finish strong

We are as different in our food tastes as our running styles and times.

I know vegan runners, carnivores, and folks who live on chips and salsa. My marathoning friends include women under 100 pounds, and guys well over 200. Since polls show that the número uno reason people start running is weight management, a lot of marathoners were heavier when their training began, sometimes much heavier.

Unlike Wallis Simpson, the late Duchess of Windsor, I don’t believe you can be too thin or too rich. But extra weight slows you down and puts more pressure on your joints.

Here’s my story. It seems to work for a user demographic of at least one — moi. I weigh 155 and have for a long time. I’m not a snacker, I don’t have a sweet tooth, but I do love pastas (perhaps the result of living in Tuscany decades ago). If I have a mantra about diet, it’s avoiding empty calories — butter, cream sauces and gravies, most salad dressings, buttered popcorn, and heavily fried foods.

The last year, living in Chiriqui Province in rural western Panama as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, I really struggled to get enough to eat. There was no restaurant or bakery in my town, the tienda carried only nitrate-filled processed meats, and the single bread was generic white. Panamanians eat huge quantities of white rice, so that was my usual starch. My protein came from peanut butter, canned tuna, and eggs. I dropped almost ten pounds, and my stomach was always growling.

Since getting back to the first world, I’ve reverted to far more varied menus, with fish and chicken, the occasional burger, pastas, brown rice, whole wheat breads, frozen yogurt.

Breakfast, if at home, is juice, cereal with fruit and skim milk, toast with preserves, and coffee. After long runs on the weekend, it’s pancakes with bacon, easy on the syrup, at Jim’s or La Peep. Lunch at home (I don’t go to an office) is often a sandwich with a dinner leftover as the filler – meatloaf, frittata, salmon croquette, and a side salad. Lunch out is likely to be a salad bar (my fav is SouperSalad at 281/Bitters).

For dinner I eat anything that sounds good – pizza without meat toppings, stir-fry, grilled chicken with fruit salsas, and fettuccine with mushrooms. If we do go out, I’m apt to have Chinese, Indian, or Thai meals. Because like a lot of runners I’m low on iron, I head for the 410 Diner and its calves liver and onion at least once a month.

¿Que más? Rare snacks tend to be cashews, pretzels, and an adult grape beverage before dinner. Nutrition on the run? – Gu, Gatorade, Powerade for anything over ten miles; just water for less.

There are a lot of good books on sports nutrition out there — Eat to Win; East Smart, Play Hard; Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes; Nutrition for Running; Living the High-Carbohydrate Way. Liz Applegate’s column in Runners World and Jane Brody’s in the New York Times contain a lot of common sense about eating and running.

If you are a junk food junkie and can’t yet wean yourself from KFC or Long John Silver, at least go for the smaller portions. In the long run, you’ll be smaller (and a better runner) yourself.